News Archive

Backstage Whispers overheard by Richard Andrews

Last updated : 1st March 2010

The world premiere of The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, a multi-media production adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic novel of the same name, telling the story of 15 year old girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1970s, adapted by and featuring Marielle Heller, with Jon Krupp, Michael Laurence, Mariann Mayberry and Nell Mooney, directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde and Rachel Eckerling, will play at 3LD Art & Technology Center from March 15th. 3LD Art & Technology Center is located at 80 Greenwich Street at Rector Street.

Ma-Yi Theater Company will stage the world premiere of Michi Barall's Rescue Me (A Post-modern classic with snacks) , a dance theatre adaptation of Euripides's Iphigenia In Tauris, with David Greenspan, Jennifer Ikeda, Julian Barnett, Oni Monifa, Renee Brown, Leon Ingulsrud, Katherine Partington, Postell Pringle and Paco Tolson, directed by Loy Arcenas, with choreography by Julian Barnett, previewing from March 21st at Ohio Theatre, opening on March 23rd. Iphigenia is 34, stuck in a dead end job, haunted by the past, and at the mercy of both a temperamental goddess and a barbarian king with a fondness for human sacrifice. The Ohio Theatre is located at 66 Wooster Street, between Spring and Broome Streets.

Leslie Jordan will perform his solo show My Trip Down The Pink Carpet, a collection of true life stories charting his journey from small-town USA to Hollywood, directed by David Galligan, previewing from April 14th at the Midtown Theater, opening on April 19th. The producers are Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, Bruce Robert Harris, Jack W Batman, Dennis Grimaldi, Jean McFaddin-Susan Falk and Daniel Wallace. The Midtown Theater is located at 163 West 46th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues.

The WorkShop Theater Company will stage Zona Gale's 1920 play Miss Lulu Bett, in which a spinster receives a marriage proposal, and then a secret is revealed that her life changes for ever, with Laurie Schroeder, Mary Ruth Baggott, Dan Patrick Brady, Kate Castaneda-La Mar, Anne Fizzard, Michael Gnat, Maya Jasinska, David Mead, Gerrianne Raphael and Ben Sumrall, directed by Kathleen Brant, from March 18th. The WorkShop Theater Company is located at 312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues.

Room #103, Hotel Chelsea, a site specific theatrical evening centered around Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and other former guests of the Chelsea Hotel, including Sid Vicious, Nancy Spungen, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Jack Kerouac, Arthur C Clarke, Janis Joplin and Brendan Beehan, created and directed by James Veitch, with Kevin Confoy, Lucia Brizzi and Justin Perkins, will be staged in Room 103 at the hotel itself, from March 19th to 28th. The Hotel Chelsea is located at 223 West 23rd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues.

Several theatre practitioners will stage new productions in the Metropolitan Opera's 2010/2011 season, including Nicholas Hytner directing Verdi's Don Carlo, Bartlett Sher directing Rossini's Le Comte Ory, Robert Lepage directing Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, the first two parts of his new staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, and Peter Sellars will direct John Adams's Nixon In China, which Mark Morris will choreograph.

David Belasco's The Return Of Peter Grimm, with Frank Anderson, Linda Blackstock, Brad Fraizer, Ken Ferrigni, Sidney Fortner, Helen Highfield, George Hosmer, Richard Vernon and Matthew Hughes, directed by Alex Roe, will preview from March 13th at the Metropolitan Playhouse, opening on March 20th. It is the story of a man whose love for his family forces him to return from the dead to care for them, but who can only be seen and heard by an 8 year old boy. The Metropolitan Playhouse is located at 220 East 4th Street, between Avenues A and B.

The Rumour Machine says: that the recent London production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Evita, with Elena Roger reprising her performance in the title role, directed by Michael Grandage, choreographed by Rob Ashford, will transfer to Broadway at a Nederlander theatre next year, courtesy of producers by Hal Luftig and Scott Sanders; and that Miguel Pinero's Short Eyes, a in which a racially mixed group of inmates at a New York prison, are joined by a white middle class man accused of raping a young girl, directed by Abel Ferrara, will be heading for Broadway, also in the 2010/2011 season. The Rumour Machine grinds on.